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> Rio Carbon 5 GB MP3 Player Review
Welcome
to the Rio Carbon 5 GB MP3 Player Review page:
I've had my Rio Carbon for
about two weeks - I got a great deal from Amazon.com when they were $25 off on
presale. I was replacing a broken 2nd Gen iPod. I was bummed to have to get a
new MP3 player so quickly (my iPod only lasted a little more than a year), but
this is a nice chance to try out a new gadget.
I have to say that this
is a very nice hard drive based digital audio player - my first thought is that
I like it more than the iPod. It's tiny. Smaller than my cell phone and smaller
than the iPod mini. It's cool looking. It holds 1 GB more than the mini and has
a reported battery life of 20 + hours. The jog wheel and center pad are no match
for the scroll wheel of the iPod, but there's more to the interface than the input
method - the Carbon OS does the job of browsing and selecting files just fine.
I had a brief problem with the device locking up when I first hooked it
up to my PC, but I flashed the firmware and instsalled a new USB 2.0 (I had been
having trouble with the onboard USB ports anyway) and everything looks like smooth
sailing from here.
I have managed to squeeze on just over 1300 songs,
including some fairly long players spanning the jazz, ambient, rock, classical,
electronic and avant-garde/experimental genres. I transcoded many of my songs
into WMA @ 128 and I don't notice the difference much, if at all. The sound is
comprable to the iPod and even maybe a touch better.
There's lots of talk
on the "Interweb" about how Rio made a poor design decision by making part of
the body of the Carbon out of stainless steel. This is true - I plugged in my
headphones and got a lot of static. Lame, Rio, mighty lame. Luckily, there is
a fix that doesn't require any sort of modification to the Carbon at all, nor
any thick black electrical tape on your headphones. A small bit of clear nail
polish on the base of your headphone jack (where the metal meets the metal body
of the Carbon) does the trick just fine.
Overall, I rate this item very
highly and would gladly recommend it to anyone in the market for a new MP3 player
- especially if they were already considering the iPod mini. This player is a
better value, and very slick looking to boot!
Buy the Rio Carbon
5 GB MP3 Player
